@abhiabhiabhi
TN

@xalokx

Thanks for the reply. Don't know whether similar doctors will come for RBI also or if RBI has its own docs. Do you think calling up RBI(anonymously of course) and enquiring will give a better idea? I am confounded by the fact that banks provide RESERVATIONS for totally blind people but can trip you up because you can't distinguish between dark orange and light brown.

hi guys, I've been selected for RBI assistant. I am also color-blind(red-green color blindness to be precise). In the Ishihara(color bubbles) test used by eye doctors to identify this, my score never crosses 2 or 3(out of 18 or 36 in total).

1. Calibri is a windows font. When it comes to web typography we usually keep it to fonts that come pre installed in all the major operating systems.

2. Regarding the BG color issue. The entire pages are not white in color. For instance in the what's up section the white is broken by shades of grey in the comment bars and similarly in the forum posts alternate posts are given a shade of grey for differentiation purpose as well as ease of scanning. Had it been completely white, your point is very true but since that is not the case I don't think users will have issues with reading/straining their eye. Atleast none of the users who tested the site has complained about this fact till now but we will wait till the beta to see how other users respond. :thumbsup:

3. One more issue with using any background color other than white is that different monitors are calibrated in different ways and the same color might look different in different monitors except white which sort of maintains itself well across different monitors.

4. The idea of not choosing any of those colors (aqua etc) you mentioned is just because of the fact that each user has his own preference (they hate some colors and love some). When you are designing for such a large user base it is always a good idea to keep the choices of colors to bare minimum so you don't turn away any user at the first sight itself.

Keep the suggestions coming. :)

Oh. Don't be afraid of the blue-turquoise-aqua brigade.

They've served the present version of PG quite handsomely and, so far as I know, never "turned away" any visitor.

Indeed, such colors, you might've noticed, predominate not only PG but also quite a few other social sites and online forums. Orkut, skycrapercity, santabanta, Indian Officer and many more.

And not without justification. Light blue(and allied shades and colors) are nature's own background colors. The sky, anyone?. Aesthetically, they are cool colors, in the most literal sense of that word.

As for differences in rendering in different displays, I concede that they sometimes do arise, but rarely to the point of gross distortion, and hence hardly a cause for concern.

Reg. personal preferences, whatever gave you the impression that white BG is more universally loved than any other color? :)

People never cease to point out that Facebook loves its whites, but, hey, when did that become the reason for its success? In any case, I should point out that Zuckerberg stuck to white and a bit of pastel shades of blue not because of any comprehensive user-base analysis but because he was red-green colorblind.

P.S. I doubt whether beta users will go to the extent of complaining reg. this. It ain't a bug or something. If user preference is what you're really after, why don't you hold a poll among beta users(or the general puys if you wish)? Simple and democratic.

1. Calibri is a windows font. When it comes to web typography we usually keep it to fonts that come pre installed in all the major operating systems.

2. Regarding the BG color issue. The entire pages are not white in color. For instance in the what's up section the white is broken by shades of grey in the comment bars and similarly in the forum posts alternate posts are given a shade of grey for differentiation purpose as well as ease of scanning. Had it been completely white, your point is very true but since that is not the case I don't think users will have issues with reading/straining their eye. Atleast none of the users who tested the site has complained about this fact till now but we will wait till the beta to see how other users respond. :thumbsup:

3. One more issue with using any background color other than white is that different monitors are calibrated in different ways and the same color might look different in different monitors except white which sort of maintains itself well across different monitors.

4. The idea of not choosing any of those colors (aqua etc) you mentioned is just because of the fact that each user has his own preference (they hate some colors and love some). When you are designing for such a large user base it is always a good idea to keep the choices of colors to bare minimum so you don't turn away any user at the first sight itself.

Keep the suggestions coming. :)

Oh. Don't be afraid of the blue-turquoise-aqua brigade.

They've served the present version of PG quite handsomely and, so far as I know, never "turned away" any visitor.

Indeed, such colors, you might've noticed, predominate not only PG but also quite a few other social sites and online forums. Orkut, skycrapercity, santabanta, Indian Officer and many more.

And not without justification. Light blue(and allied shades and colors) are nature's own background colors. The sky, anyone?. Aesthetically, they are cool colors, in the most literal sense of that word.

As for differences in rendering in different displays, I concede that they sometimes do arise, but rarely to the point of gross distortion, and hence hardly a cause for concern.

Reg. personal preferences, whatever gave you the impression that white BG is more universally loved than any other color? :)

People never cease to point out that Facebook loves its whites, but, hey, when did that become the reason for its success? In any case, I should point out that Zuckerberg stuck to white and a bit of pastel shades of blue not because of any comprehensive user-base analysis but because he was red-green colorblind.

P.S. I doubt whether beta users will go to the extent of complaining reg. this. It ain't a bug or something. If user preference is what you're really after, why don't you hold a poll among beta users(or the general puys if you wish)? Simple and democratic.

Hey catsmasher, thank you for the feedback. We have considered the points you raised while we were coming up with these designs which reflects in our decision to use a serif font like Georgia for the articles section to enable better readability. Even the line-heights used were thought over many number of times so that our users will have the best reading experience on PG. When we started redesigning the forums we decided to go with a sans-serif font like tahoma as the line-breaks and paragraphs were decided by the user and a font like georgia will totally look out of place when the content structure doesn't follow any set patterns.
Regarding the contrast between text and background we have maintained a contrast that is somewhere in the median region to get the best RT (response time). A higher contrast will be using #000 (pure black) for text and #FFF (pure white) for background. Instead of this we have used a color of #333 (not-so-pure black) and #FFF (pure white) for the background. What you have seen in the screenshot is just an image of how the site was looking in the user's machine, the real version will look much clearer and crispier than that. You will get to see when we actually launch the beta in the coming week :)

Agree with you on the font issue. Though I personally prefer Calibri. Nice, clean and uncluttered. High on readability. :thumbsup:

Coming back to color schemes, I doubt whether pure-white-bg+impure-black-text would be as reader-friendly as, say, impure-white-bg+pure-black text.

You are only partially right when you say it is an issue of contrasts. The reason why I say this is that the font color, regardless of different shades of light colours, would best be kept pure black. Nothing comes close to black color for text(other than links, titles etc ofcourse) in terms of simplicity.

On the other hand, BG color is what strikes a viewer immediately on entering a site. There are many discerning users(of the kind who, I would guess, frequent PG) who prefer to turn down screen brightness in their laptops/PC monitors when having to view sites with bright white BGs for long durations.

Hell, it is one of the major reasons why hard-core readers still prefer Kindle over the New iPad. (Not entirely same thing, but similar issue with white-bg-affecting-readability-on-lcd-displays)

I'm all for tweaks, but of all the myriad colors at your disposal(turquoise, aqua or some light shade of violet perhaps), did you have to go for squeaky-clean white? Ouch!

I hope this color scheme will be rectified before the full version reaches us.

Hey catsmasher, thank you for the feedback. We have considered the points you raised while we were coming up with these designs which reflects in our decision to use a serif font like Georgia for the articles section to enable better readability. Even the line-heights used were thought over many number of times so that our users will have the best reading experience on PG. When we started redesigning the forums we decided to go with a sans-serif font like tahoma as the line-breaks and paragraphs were decided by the user and a font like georgia will totally look out of place when the content structure doesn't follow any set patterns.
Regarding the contrast between text and background we have maintained a contrast that is somewhere in the median region to get the best RT (response time). A higher contrast will be using #000 (pure black) for text and #FFF (pure white) for background. Instead of this we have used a color of #333 (not-so-pure black) and #FFF (pure white) for the background. What you have seen in the screenshot is just an image of how the site was looking in the user's machine, the real version will look much clearer and crispier than that. You will get to see when we actually launch the beta in the coming week :)

Agree with you on the font issue. Though I personally prefer Calibri. Nice, clean and uncluttered. High on readability. :thumbsup:

Coming back to color schemes, I doubt whether pure-white-bg+impure-black-text would be as reader-friendly as, say, impure-white-bg+pure-black text.

You are only partially right when you say it is an issue of contrasts. The reason why I say this is that the font color, regardless of different shades of light colours, would best be kept pure black. Nothing comes close to black color for text(other than links, titles etc ofcourse) in terms of simplicity.

On the other hand, BG color is what strikes a viewer immediately on entering a site. There are many discerning users(of the kind who, I would guess, frequent PG) who prefer to turn down screen brightness in their laptops/PC monitors when having to view sites with bright white BGs for long durations.

Hell, it is one of the major reasons why hard-core readers still prefer Kindle over the New iPad. (Not entirely same thing, but similar issue with white-bg-affecting-readability-on-lcd-displays)

I'm all for tweaks, but of all the myriad colors at your disposal(turquoise, aqua or some light shade of violet perhaps), did you have to go for squeaky-clean white? Ouch!

I hope this color scheme will be rectified before the full version reaches us.

From spending lots of time over the years reading stuff over the internet, I can vouch for one thing:

For websites/forums that typically have people viewing lots of text,

the best background colors are the light blue/purple shades that PG currently uses.

Not because I have any great fondness for them, but because they are the easiest on the eyes. :)

In contrast, white(which dominates the new look) is probably, IMO, too bright and unsuited for a website like PG that has readers poring over comments, posts etc. :nono:

While change is to be welcomed, one should not effect changes merely for the sake of it, especially when it would prove to be a step backwards. I hope the administrators consider this point.

From spending lots of time over the years reading stuff over the internet, I can vouch for one thing:

For websites/forums that typically have people viewing lots of text,

the best background colors are the light blue/purple shades that PG currently uses.

Not because I have any great fondness for them, but because they are the easiest on the eyes. :)

In contrast, white(which dominates the new look) is probably, IMO, too bright and unsuited for a website like PG that has readers poring over comments, posts etc. :nono:

While change is to be welcomed, one should not effect changes merely for the sake of it, especially when it would prove to be a step backwards. I hope the administrators consider this point.

Before posting scores, would like to confirm what many previous year TIME students had said reg. slot flexibility.

I took the test scheduled for 12:00 noon at around 6 PM today. No problems whatsoever.

And yeah, I gave the test in Chrome browser as well. Again, no problems on that score.

Problems persist, however, with my scores, which seem to be firmly stuck in the 90's. This is the 4th 90-99 score I'm getting in as many mocks. All with very similar break-ups as well. Guess it's time to actually start preparing.

QADI-17A, 12C, 31
VALR-29A, 23C, 63

Overall -94

So far, haven't actually started studying for either section. Shall begin for QADI now.